


My Broken House Behind Me and Good Things Ahead

by capripian



Series: This Year (Sasha Week 2021) [1]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Allusions to Barrett Racket's Shitty Parenting, Fighting but like. in a not detailed way, Gen, Light Angst, Sasha and Brock Other London Funtimes, Spoilers for Paris arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28803939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capripian/pseuds/capripian
Summary: Day 1: DangerSasha Racket has a plan this time. A good plan, if you'd ask her. It'll be tough to pull off, certainly, but she's the best thief in Other London. Nobody could catch her, no way.Things go slightly worse than how she planned, and then slightly better.
Relationships: Brock & Sasha Racket
Series: This Year (Sasha Week 2021) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111829
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Sasha Week 2021





	My Broken House Behind Me and Good Things Ahead

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Sasha Week prompt Danger. In reality it turned out to be two pages of danger and one page of bittersweet, but sometimes that's how the cookie crumbles. 
> 
> Source for both the title of this fic and the title of the series is This Year by the Mountain Goats, which is a Sasha song 100%. 
> 
> Shoutout to the LOLOMG server for answering my questions about the timeline. Y'all're the real ones.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Quiet, controlled, measured. There’s three guards total, Sasha guesses, two in the alley below her perch and one on the opposite side keeping lookout. Oh, and the one she took out on the way over here. Four, then. Whatever they’re smuggling must be way beyond Other London’s usual.

Barrett told her this job’d be tough. She’s here anyways. Not like she had much choice, she thinks, looking at the ring on her finger. She grits her teeth, looks away. Just get through the job, then you can worry about what comes next. One thing at a time.

Next step’s to take out the lads below, but the one on the other side’s lookin’ out. She squints, and things get more complicated. 

He’s got a scroll in his hands. Not a cheap one either, by the looks of it. She recalculates once, twice. She can try to make the jump over and take out the mage first, but that’ll have the rest of the guards alerted, and she’s not strong enough to do two on one like that.

It’s stupid. She doesn’t even need to kill them, not really, but Barrett insisted. She guesses they’re from some rival gang and this is a test, but she doesn’t even know what’s in the shipping crate the two blokes are guarding. He’s been reticent, lately, not telling her much.

She shifts forward a little on the balls of her feet, and feels the old stone crumble under one shoe. Freeze. Don’t move. Stay still and tense and barely breathing ‘til the moment’s passed. One of the guards looks up, but the other doesn’t seem to notice. She inches back away from the edge, exhaling. Least one’s human, so the darkness will hide her, but the other’s got tusks. Orcish, least a little, so that’s more concerning. They’re the one who looked up. 

She thinks it’s fine. Moves forward a little bit more, pulls a dagger. Even with the mage, the manhole cover behind the two blokes’ll let her escape without getting too beat up. She can probably grab whatever’s in the box, she’ll get a few nicks but she’s slippery. 

It's easy to visualize it. Nimble fingers picking the lock from behind them, striking like a shadow and using the dark to hide the whatever-it-is that she’ll slip into her coat. Slide down the ladder with a grin and disappear into the-

A sharp whistle interrupts her reverie. Fuck.

The half orc is poised with two fingers between their lips, and the human looks up at her in alarm. Sasha feels the drop in her stomach as the gutter-pipe buckles beneath her, and braces herself. This’ll be messier than she had planned.

She slips down from the wall and behind the human, burying a dagger in his side and dodging past his burlier friend’s spear. The human staggers back and collapses, but the half orc is still after her. They step forward and slash and she knows they’re keeping her at a distance to avoid her daggers, but that doesn’t mean she knows what to do about it. 

And then, of course, she remembers who she’s been forgetting. 

The mage on the other side, hood blowing back to reveal a halfling, starts speaking. Sasha swears, dodges another close call from that damn spear, and starts to think of an escape plan.

If Barrett wanted this thing so badly she’d have to get it or he’d be pissed, especially if it was a test. But if she told him it got exploded by magic… no. Wouldn’t work. It could be something unexplodable, and if it is and he found out she just didn’t get it that’d be worse than just failing. 

Is there anything unexplodable? She’s not sure. It’s something to think about for when she’s _not_ fighting off someone with nearly two feet on her and a very sharp spear near her vital organs. 

She ducks under the half orc’s arm and grabs for the box, but something sticky hits her in the back. And in the arm, and in the leg.

And then she realizes- it’s string. Or no, not string, not exactly, but web. It fills the area, and the bloke she’s avoiding hops up onto the box in time. She…Listen, she’s a _good_ thief. She’s quick and she’s dodgy and her fingers are nimble and she _never_ loses at dice, not ever. But she’s been dodging a spear for the past however long it’s been, and she’s tired, and she slips.

She gets caught up in the webs as they surround the area, struggling to set herself free. She has one hand out, so she can get a dagger, but when she tries to cut through the webbing her dagger just gets stuck in it. She curses, struggling against the sticky netting, and she can see the mage and the spearman in her periphery. Both coming towards her, both ready to nab her.

She feels something grab her ankle.She kicks, at first, but then she looks down and recognizes the hand. She smiles, and salvation pops up from under the manhole cover with a lit match in his other hand.

“Brock!”, she shouts, excited, before remembering she’s supposed to be quiet. He nods to her, puts a finger to his lips, and tosses her the match. She nods back.

The two remaining guards aren’t sure what to make of someone new, but Brock grabs a dagger from inside his jacket and gets the halfling in the shoulder. While he does so, Sasha presses the match to the webbing over her trapped hand and watches it burn away until there’s none left.

When she looks back, Brock’s fighting with the half orc and the halfling’s slumped against the wall. _“Nice,”_ she whispers, and he tosses a grin back at her as she unsheathes another two daggers.

They make short work of the remaining guard together, each taking a different side and flanking them. It’s good, fighting with Brock again. She hasn’t in a while, especially after she started doing jobs for Barrett. 

Brock smiles, and taps on the now-webless crate. “What’s say we see what’s inside?”

“I’m meant to take it back to Barrett, so whatever it is we can’t keep it,” she replies. She wants to, sure, but he’d know. He always knows.

“Well, yeah, but let’s at least see what it is. Even if Barrett won’t let us keep it.”

She nods. “Alright then, mate.” 

Making quick work of the locks, she pries open the crate. Inside is… hm. Inside is a lot of ice, and a very big bug.

“Oh, _wicked,”_ says Brock.

“What is it?”

“A dire lobster, Sasha. They’re super expensive, I heard they eat ‘em in Paris.”

“Expensive? But it’s just a bug, innit? S’not like eels are expensive.”

He shrugs. “Rich folks are batty.”

They pause a moment more, laugh, before Sasha has to break it off. “Listen, I’ve gotta go. If I keep Barrett waiting too long it’s bad news. But come back n’ see me, okay?”

“Sasha, next time I see you it’ll be _us_ feasting on dire lobsters.”

She elbows him. “Yeah right.”

Brock never does come back. Eventually she stops looking. But ten years later, in a penthouse looking over the city he left her for, Sasha finally gets to eat a dire lobster.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, please leave comments or kudos.
> 
> You can follow me on Tumblr at @capripian and @capripian-arts, or talk to me on discord at fey dyke#2644.
> 
> If I've made any typos point 'em out in the comments and I'll fix them.


End file.
